A Cold Spring in Summer: Taipei via Jetstar, Kavalan Whisky in Yilan

[yflyer]

I headed to Taipei with Mrs yflyer and the family for a short getaway at the end of the June school holidays. Why Taiwan? There were very good airfares available on Jetstar from Singapore to Taipei, and Mrs yflyer is a big fan of the food and shopping in Taiwan.

Apart from Taipei, we would spend a couple of days at a hot spring resort in Yilan, on the eastern coast of Taiwan, around 90 minutes away from Taipei, and also pay a visit to a rare cold spring in Su’ao.

We had a few memorable meals on this trip, including a yakiniku/BBQ dinner at Dawan Yakiniku in Taipei, and lots of street food too.

As an added bonus, Yilan is where the Kavalan Whisky Distillery is located. Kavalan made headlines in March this year when they won the award for “World’s Best Single Malt Whisky” at the World Whiskies Awards (WWA), beating out whiskies from Scotland, Japan and elsewhere in the process. We would head to the distillery for a short visit during our trip.

[yflyer]

Jetstar flies out of Changi T1.

Our flight was a 7am departure, which meant a very early start to the day. The airport was already very busy when we arrived at T1 at 5.35am.



Compared to check-in at full service airlines at T1 such as Emirates or QF, the Jetstar check-in involves many self service kiosks, and even automated baggage acceptance. The kiosk process was fairly straightforward, although I was not used to putting on my own baggage tags, and fumbled through it. The automated bag drop was less straightforward and a little confusing, but there were many Jetstar staff available to assist.

It was still dark when we arrived at the gate. Our aircraft for this four and a half hour flight was an A320, painted in an attractive matt grey/silver paint scheme.



Boarding commenced on time. The aircraft was configured in conventional 3-3 layout, in an all-economy configuration.



Seat pitch was decent – I had no measuring tape with me, but subjectively speaking I found it similar to A320’s and 737’s on MI, MH and QF. Far roomier than the Vueling A320 I flew between Brussels and Rome not long ago.



The seat design is such that the seat pocket, where magazines etc are kept, is on the upper part of the seat.



Legroom was unobstructed, as there was no IFE and therefore no IFE box…



I did find that this seat design had one quirk though: as there was no seat pocket around knee level, and no hard back to the seat, if the person behind you pushed his knees into the back of the seat, you could definitely feel it on your own back through the seat cushioning. But seat pitch was ok, so for me my knees did not make contact with the seat in front, and I only felt the knees of the person behind me poking into my back a couple of times during the flight. A little like getting a lumbar massage…

Recline was ok, if not particularly generous. The next picture shows my seat in the reclined position.



Emergency row seats had excellent legroom, as did the first row seat.



The first row seats were the best on the plane.



The extra-legroom emex and first row seats were available at additional cost passengers at additional cost at time of booking.

If the emex seats were still unsold at flight time, the cabin crew would make an announcement to pax to invite pax to “upgrade” to these preferred seats (for a small additional fee).



In a cabin with no LCD panels or TV screens of any sort, the safety demo was, of course, manual.

[yflyer]

There was an extensive inflight café menu available, with many hot and cold snacks and beverages available for purchase.



There weren’t that many hot meal choices available: among them teriyaki chicken, western-style grilled chicken, nasi lemak and vegetarian fried rice, and not all choices were available for purchase on every flight, but the selection of snacks (including cup noodles) and beverages was fairly broad.

I remain quite amused that on LCC’s, the “for purchase” menu seems to include a larger selection of F&B than what many full service airlines provide.

[yflyer]

We had pre-ordered a couple of hot meals for this flight: the teriyaki chicken and the herb roasted chicken.







The roasted chicken was fine, but a little spicier than you would expect for a Western main course. Those who don't like spicy food take note...



The teriyaki chicken was delicious. Special mention to the short grained rice that accompanied the tender chicken.



Our ticket was a “Plus” ticket which came with S$10 in flight vouchers that could be used for F&B or duty free purchases. We used these to purchase additional snacks such as brownies or milo (coffee/tea was included in the meal.)

Not many folks on this full flight had pre-ordered food, but many did purchase food on the flight itself.



As this was a fairly long flight, apart from the hot meal served soon after take-off, I also ate cup noodles prior to our 11.45am landing.

[yflyer]

Great views of TPE out of the starboard side windows as we flew up the coast of Taiwan before doing a 180 and landing towards the South.





At the gate in Terminal 1 after arrival…



Jetstar uses the renovated Terminal 1 at TPE. This is the original terminal which has been fully refurbished.

The clean, modern toilets there also have the touchscreen feedback system that they have in Changi, except that the smileys/frownies are far more expressive than the straitlaced expressions on the Singapore Changi touchscreens…



Overall impressions of this flight?

As far as LCC experiences go, this was good. Cabin service was warm and cheerful -- superb cabin crew. No compromises in that department on this flight. IFE was non-existent, but many pax were watching videos on their own iPads / tablets or were engrossed in their eReaders. A few even had (gasp) books! So not having IFE is no longer a major drawback on LCC’s. Besides, as this was a 7am departure, most folks must have woken up very early, and many were asleep for much of the flight. Catering was fine, with a wider selection than expected. The fact that our tickets included S$10 of catering/duty free was an unexpected bonus (Not all fare classes come with this).

But four and a half hours is about as long as I can stand on a narrowbody (Whether an A320 or a 737). They grey leather and dimmed cabin didn’t do much to dispel the impression that we were hurtling along in a dark grey tube for an extended period of time.

What did I miss compared to SQ Y on a sector of comparable length? I missed catching the latest hollywood movies and TV selections on Krisworld, I missed the superb Y catering, the pampering of SQ’s cabin crew, and above all I missed the spaciousness and bright, cheery ambience of SQ’s roomy wide bodies. A twin-aisle aircraft like a 777 or A330 would have made a world of difference in comfort on a sector of this length.

While Jetstar got me there without fuss or discomfort, I spent the flight counting the minutes to arrival, and getting out of the metal tube on arrival after four and a half hours was a relief. On SQ Y, the flight itself is a thing to enjoy, and sometimes on SQ, the Y experience is so good, I don’t even want the flight to end…

[yflyer]

We took a taxi from the airport to Taipei, where we checked into the Amba Hotel in Ximending, a lively shopping district and evening pedestrian mall in central Taipei.



The Amba is a trendy, modern family-oriented hotel ideally located above a mall in lively Ximending. This is a very new hotel, just opened in 2012, part of the Ambassador hotel group. It was envisioned to be a mid-price design-oriented (Which I would interpret to be an affordable type of “designer/boutique” hotel) hotel, and to me it lives up to this concept. It has attractive, slightly quirky design elements, and a modern, minimalist style that I liked very much. Pricing was reasonable, especially for a family of 4. I booked this hotel directly from the Jetstar website, together with the air tickets.

We got to the hotel before 1pm, and check-in was not until 3pm, so we left our bags at the reception and headed for a meal in the hotel restaurant and some shopping in the mall downstairs before returning at 3pm.



The reception area offers ample seating and table space for lounging/computer use, and has complimentary wifi for all guests – very convenient.



Hotel styling and décor was contemporary and very attractive. One notable work of art in the lobby was this series of portraits of lady’s faces…which upon close inspection was created by stickers. Both beautiful and amazing…





Our room was a loft suite which had room for 4.



Separate living area with two sofas that were converted to beds.

[yflyer]

Open sink and coffee/tea/minfridge and in-room safe.



Shower stall (No tub).

[yflyer]

The main dining outlet for breakfast and semi-buffet lunch and dinner was decorated with shelves of books, LP covers and comic/movie figurines.







There was a very well stocked bar…



…which served a range of quite inspired cocktails, each expertly mixed by a crew of young and very enthusiastic bartenders / mixologists…





The breakfast buffet selection was not particularly wide, but it was reasonably priced, and had a decent range of Asian and Western selections. The Asian selections were better than the western dishes, which looked ordinary.

Freshly made sticky rice rolls for breakfast, with your choice of fillings…

[yflyer]

There was so much to do in Ximending, we could easily have spent several days just exploring the shopping and eating outlets in the vicinity of the hotel, which included malls, a bookstore, many fashion outlets/boutiques, and street food, as well as convenient and moderately priced health massage and foot reflexology outlets.





On our second day, we had lunch at a famous outlet selling delicious braised goose…



…and after that, we headed for dessert at a local ice cream shop, quite famous for a long list of popular and unusual flavours…





This place is not going to win any awards for décor…it was decidedly downmarket and run down…but like so many kopitiam and street food outlets in different countries, once you tasted the dish on offer, all that ceased to be relevant.



The folks who run this shop are grandmasters of ice cream. Baskin Robbins or Ben & Jerry’s could not teach these folks anything.



The ice cream is smooth and is bursting with natural flavours.



While they have conventional ice cream flavours, my older girl switched her order from “chocolate chip” to “black sesame” when she saw our disapproving stares. Our other girl ordered “peanut” flavour. Both were delicious.

And Mrs yflyer? She of course scanned the menu and zero’d in on savoury sesame oil chicken-flavoured ice cream. And this wasn’t even the strangest flavour on offer.



Despite the strangeness of it all, the sesame oil chicken flavoured ice cream tasted…very good! Surprisingly good in fact. We could not believe how good it tasted. There was method to their madness.

The lady in the shop asked us how we liked it? “Great!”, Mrs yflyer replied. “This flavour was first created for our customers who were diabetics”, the lady explained.

There were real chunks of chicken in the ice cream, pictured below...



Ximending got even more lively in the evening, when many of the streets were closed, making it a pedestrian walkway, complete with buskers and street performers.



Many of the other tourist attractions in Taipei, including the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, and Taipei 101, and the night markets were a short taxi or subway ride away.



I would strongly recommend the Amba Ximending for a family holiday in Taipei.

[yflyer]

By coincidence, a good friend of mine was visiting Taipei while we were there. He brought us to his favourite yakiniku/BBQ restaurant in Taipei, Dawan Yakiniku.



This restaurant is hugely popular. Reservations need to be made days or even weeks in advance. On tripadvisor.com, this restaurant is, in fact, rated #1 out of more than 8000 restaurants in Taipei. Now my personal view is that tripadvisor ratings need to be taken with a pinch of salt (especially hotel ratings), but in this case, the top billing is well deserved. It was a spectacular dinner. How my friend managed to secure a large reservation for a party of six at such short notice I will never know…



The focus here is on meat, mainly beef, and this specialization shows. Most diners will sit at the counter, where a personal chef will cook glorious cuts of meat and vegetables in front of you on a charcoal stove, delivering a constant stream of beautifully cooked slices of meat, different cuts, and different styles, onto your plate. A deceptively simple concept taken to extreme levels of perfection here.

There was a menu printed on cow hide, but we ate “omakase” style and left it to our chef to decide what to serve…



Salad to begin…



Charcoal stove…and whisky on the rocks to accompany our meal…



…and then the meal proper began...



...course after course of amazingly delicious meat, individual portions, still searingly hot, straight from the charcoal grill onto my plate...



…skillfully cooked by our chef, whose warm personality and conversation were an integral part of the dining experience as well…



Tender, melt-in-the mouth beef tongue…





Tender slices of pork jowl…

[yflyer]

Wagyu ribeye…



Seared briefly…



…then left to rest for a few minutes…



…before another round of grilling on charcoal…



…and sliced before serving, still pink and juicy on the inside.



Thinly sliced shoulder/skirt steak…



The marbling on the next course, short ribs, blew us all away…



…licked by flames…



...and the result…



Very large and plump Hokkaido scallops…



Some vegetables next, including asparagus, thinly sliced mushroom, and some of the sweetest corn I have eaten…



Best way to eat corn is to stick a chopstick up the cob and munch on it like a popsicle...

[yflyer]

We ended with more thinly sliced beef, this time in a savoury marinade, and finished with a coating of raw egg…







…and grilled slices of local yam, which was surprisingly light and crunchy…



Very far removed from the elaborate, overly fussy world of michelin starred dining, but this was fine dining stripped to the barest essentials – a very pure expression of what it means to dine on meat cooked over fire.

A meal I will remember for a long time!

After that, we took a stroll through one of Taiwan’s many night markets, to work off a few calories…





By then, we were too full to contemplate trying the many delightful foods on offer, and were content to look…





Next up, a train journey to Yilan county, a stay at the EHR Hotel & Resort Yilan, a cold spring in Su’ao, and the Kavalan Whisky Distillery.

To be continued!

[yflyer]

After a couple of days in Taipei, we took a train from Taipei Main Station to Toucheng, in Yilan County. This was a 1.5 hour train journey which winds its way through hilly/mountainous terrain to the eastern coast of Taiwan. There is a coach/bus service which takes a faster route through road tunnels bored through the hills, but the train journey, with a segment along the coastline, was more scenic, so we opted for that.

Tickets on the “Zhi Qiang” train service were available online. While we had reserved seats on the train, it was a packed service, and the seats we obtained were scattered throughout the train. For this local train service, there were also standing tickets, with no seats assigned. As this was a holiday/weekend period, the train was completely packed with young holiday makers, with many standing in the aisles.



Our family boarded the train in one carriage at the head of the train, with the intention of settling the kids and luggage in one pair of seats, before heading through the train to our single seats in other carriages, but the train carriages were packed like a Singapore MRT at rush hour, with passengers (each with a standing ticket) filling the aisles. I decided to stay put, and spent the journey alternately standing and sitting on the armrest of my daughter’s seat, as there would be no way I would be able to make it to my reserved seat 6 carriages away. Mrs yflyer, whose seat was 2 carriages away, managed to politely squeeze her way to her reserved seat.

The train journey was a scenic one, with hilly terrain, streams and rivers, and the occasional town.









As the train wound it’s way around the hills, the crowds gradually thinned out, and towards the end of the train journey, we were finally able to stretch out in our train carriage, which was actually quite spacious. Mrs yflyer claims that the end carriage that we were in was more spacious than the other carriages on this train.





An hour or so into the train journey, we emerged from the hills onto the coastline, and we were greeted by the sight of beautiful blue waters off the east coast of Taiwan.



By then, there was also enough room in the train for the F&B cart to come round.



We got off the train at Toucheng station.

[yflyer]

We stocked up on snacks and drinks at a 7-11 across the street from the train station before catching a taxi to our resort. There is also a snack vendor operating out of a van parked next to the train station, that has achieved some level of online fame selling a egg/dough fritter as a snack.



Served hot immediately after cooking, this was absolutely delicious…



We caught a taxi to our resort, the EHR Hotel & Resort Yilan, just a few minutes up the coastal road.



This part of Yilan county is quite popular with tourists (Mainly domestic tourists, I suspect). There is a scenic coastline…



Stunning lookout points…





And a good view of Turtle Island some distance off shore…





There is a museum…



…and a beach, with black sand, that is popular with beach goers and surfers. Other activities include a form of paragliding (Which we did not try…)

[yflyer]

The EHR resort itself is set right on the coastline…



…with stunning sea views and a tidal park on one side…



…and steep rolling hills on the other.



There is a hot spring integrated into the resort, with both an outdoor hot spring and an indoor hot spring.



The spring water is clear at source, but turns brown when it oxidizes in the air. Spring water was around 38-39 degrees Celsius. Hot, but not scaldingly so.

Some of the hotel rooms also have private hot spring tubs with spring water piped directly into the rooms.

The hotel grounds were lush with greenery…





…which contrasted with the rocky tidal beach along the coastline, which could be explored at low tide.